THE tehelka expose in neighbouring India is both reassuring and humbling. Reassuring in the sense that it is good to know that somebody else can be as corrupt and rapacious as us. Humbling in the sense that something like the tehelka expose could not happen in Pakistan. National security or some such excuse would take care of that.
The Justice Qayyum tapes detailing conversations which deeply implicate His Lordship, the then law minister and the then Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, in judicial impropriety, to put it no stronger than this, are about as explosive as anything in the same league can get. But what have they led to? A tortuous denial on the part of Khalid Anwar, the then lord chancellor, and hurt silence on the part of their two lordships. Anywhere else in the less benighted parts of the world, these luminaries would have been raked over the coals. Hand it to the benign concepts of justice prevalent in Pakistan that they have got away just like that.
As for the attorney-general, the ever-green Aziz Munshi, the stance he has taken before the Supreme Court is that the tapes do not exist. Since they were not authorized, at least not on paper, how can they exist?
There could not have been a greater smoking gun than the Mehrangate scandal. Conversations which implicated the ISI and a host of self-righteous politicians were on tape, taking money (forget under what guise) from the Mehran Bank president, Younus Habib. But Mehrangate was taken care of by what must rank as one of the most effective cover-ups in Pakistani history. Habib spent some time in prison. The other principals may have lost some sleep, although even that is doubtful given the robustness of Pakistani consciences, but their time in the sun was not interrupted.
Younus Habib gave about 14 crore rupees to the then army chief, General Aslam Beg. Half this amount was deposited in ISI coffers, half of it doled out to a string of politicians in the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, the ISI-arranged political alliance to stop Benazir Bhutto in her tracks.
The list of politicians thus favoured is known. The then ISI chief and now our ambassador to the Holy Land, Lt-Gen Asad Durrani, gave a signed affidavit to this effect to the Supreme Court, in a writ petition regarding the Mehrangate scandal brought by Air Marshal Asghar Khan.
Flaming evidence, all out in the open, but no charges brought, much less any convictions. Obviously, we handle such things better than in India.
What is more, Kidwai, one of the Mehrangate principals who handed out money left and right, was appointed our man in Nairobi by Nawaz Sharif. To all appearances he enjoys General Musharraf's trust too because he is still at his post as high commissioner (and, as I understand from some quarters, doing a fine job).
But why dwell on a single scandal? Can anything be more graphic than the strictures against many army high-ups, some of them still living and enjoying good health, in the Hamoodur Rahman Report? But none of this damning criticism seems to have harmed anyone. My admiration in this respect goes out specially to Maj-Gen Rahim Khan, a divisional commander in East Pakistan and later, after we had washed our hands off the eastern wing, secretary-general, defence ministry.
What comes out clearly in the Hamood Report is that at a critical moment he virtually deserted his command, preferring the relative safety of Dhaka to the uncertainty of fighting. In Siddiq Salik's "Witness to Surrender" another aspect of the general's gallantry is also revealed. In the final moments leading up to the fall of Dhaka, Rahim off-loaded a batch of army nurses as they were about to be flown by helicopter to Burma and got in himself. Obviously not a man to be underestimated.
In any country with a stronger literary tradition than ours there would by now be a score of books on General Yahya Khan's evenings. Some of the ladies in question are alive. What wouldn't their revelations be worth? Several extremely readable accounts exist of the Shah of Iran's women and how ladies for his benefit (what else?) used to be flown in from Madame Claude's establishment in Paris. Sadly none, except in bits and pieces, of Pakistan's most colourful leader.
It is therefore not a little sad that his son and my friend Ali Yahya has attempted to dim this aspect of his father's lustre by saying (in a letter to this newspaper) that many of the ladies said to be regular visitors to the presidency used to go there for 'innocent' purposes. He has mentioned in particular the famous 'General' Rani who he says was given to visiting the presidency because her nephew-in-law was ADC to General Yahya. This defence on the part of the son, himself a friends' friend and a convivial guy, is unworthy of the father. General Yahya was a gallant ladies man. His memory deserves to be commemorated, not rebuilt on new foundations.
In some of the chat shows which followed the tehelka expose it was said, in proof of the ubiquity and wealth of arms procurement agents, that many of the farmhouses around Delhi are owned by them. What can Indians know about farmhouses? They should visit the environs of Islamabad and Lahore to get an idea of how real farmhouses look like. There is nothing squeamish or half-hearted about well-heeled Pakistanis. The architecture of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi bears witness to their love of the mock-heroic. Useless Roman pillars, gaudy facades, you have them all here.
And Pakistani shaadis at posh hotels: they never cease to amaze. Extravagance and lack of taste behind closed doors is one thing. But paraded for all to see requires audacity which Pakistani babus and other veterans (I have to be coy) have in plenty. Bureaucrats on modest salaries often hold the biggest receptions, inviting the whole town to them, perhaps as a way of displaying their clout and connections. The way it is done here it can't get more shameless anywhere else.
The Pakistani privilegentsia is a promiscuous mix: agents, fixers, briefcase-wallahs, bankers (yes, bankers without whom the money would not flow), hustlers, political upstarts and retired men in uniform. In India, being the heart of the subcontinent, there is corruption on a great scale.
But there is also genuine enterprise and industry. Alas, there is very little of these commodities here. Ever since the Afghan bonanza of the Zia years everyone on the right side of the tracks has been trying to make his fortune by fixing things.
Arms procurement has been a big part of the fixing scene. In some cases the footprints left behind would be visible from the moon. What to talk of agents, all con artists live a charmed life in Pakistan. They get away with anything. Sipra conned the Zia government - and his vaunted information secretary, Lt-Gen Mujibur Rehman - into treating him like a VIP because he said he was making a film on Jinnah. Akbar S. Ahmed, who has made a career out of self-promotion, managed to become high commissioner in London. It's just his misfortune the Guardian spilled the beans on his financial affairs, otherwise he would still be around.
When the Agosta submarine deal in Benazir's second term was going through it was widely rumoured that vast sums in commissions were involved. I too wrote about the proposed deal and got a rupees five crore damages' notice from Mr Zardari's lawyer. Then I heard no more of it.
Much later, the navy, after some ill-timed revelations, were sprung, hauled up a couple of officers for receiving bribes. They got short prison sentences. This was the only peep the nation got into the skullduggery of this affair.
Who were the principal beneficiaries? What were the sums they made? Suspicions abound but the details are shrouded in mystery.
Later just by the skin of its teeth Pakistan avoided a Mirage 2000 deal that would have broken the back of our defence budget.
Things had indeed come to a pass where strategic or battlefield need was not determining the choice of weapons but rather the commissions to be made on them.
In both the consummated submarine deal as well as the abortive Mirage deal the middleman was said to be one Amer Lodhi, whose dad was onetime head of Attock Oil Company.
Once at a party I was witness to a scene where one guy was trying to beat up another, an arms agent, because of a quarrel over a sum of money. The fixer had apparently arranged an introduction with the then air chief, Abbas Khattak, for which favour the agent was supposed to pay him ten lakh rupees.
The agent paid an instalment but then withheld the rest of the amount because, he said, the deal he was pushing had not gone through. Ten lakhs for an introduction, not bad whichever way you look at it.
No, for the connected life here is easy and comfortable. As for the unconnected, they do not matter. But could a tehelka expose be done here? Not on your life. For one, Pakistani journalists are too lazy, desk artists who do their stories without moving from their seats. The legwork required for investigative journalism is not part of the local style.
For another, who would permit such an intrusion into the forbidding spires of national security? Years ago when the Frontier Post (since dead) came up with a front-page news item saying that for a trip abroad Begum Ziaul Haq was taking 40 pieces of baggage with her, there was commotion in the ISI and a Stalinist purge in the newspaper's ranks.
Things have moved on but not so much that a general in the procurement division could be caught on film (as was the hapless General Ahluwalia) declaring his partiality for Blue Label Scotch. Is it my patriotism speaking or am I right in thinking that Pakistani procurement officers even in jest would not lose their heads over such a trifle?